I discovered Marcel Aymé when I was in college. I bought his collection
"Le Passe-Muraille" my senior year, not long after I returned from
a year in Strasbourg, France. I'm not sure when I finally got around to reading
this collection of short stories, but it must have been during graduate school,
at a time when I felt guilty whenever I read something which wasn't an assignment,
research for a paper, or linguistics journal articles. "Le
Passe-Muraille" and the other stories were so delightful that I felt very
guilty indeed! I've always wished I could share them with my English-speaking
friends, but I've never located a translation. That's why I decided to translate
some of my favorite stories myself.